In the Tunnels That Join Them
by JessicaJones
Summary: At the end of her life, in the Deep Roads, Sereda returns to where she began, and finds someone she lost.


_I started writing this... wow, more than a year ago. It was beta'd by the inimitable WellspringCD, who gave me so many lovely comments that it took me this long to address them all. Special thanks to Crisium for inspiring me to finish it._

* * *

><p>Sereda, the Lady formerly Aeducan, has always known it would end here, exactly where it began, exiled in the tunnels that join lost thaigs together. This is where Duncan saved her, thirty years ago, and her fingers tighten on the hilt of her sword, trying to hold fast to the Warden she became that day. She can't block out the tangle of their voices anymore. The corruption cleaves its way in between her thoughts, scratching holes between her memories, stealing shards of who she is.<p>

She can't count how many days she has been down among the demons, and each day is doubly worse than the last, but force of habit holds her from surrender. Sereda raises her sword and shield and fights them. It is no longer a matter of sensing darkspawn, now: she _feels_ them. Each cut of the blade cuts back at her, reverberating in a seething loop of pain. As she fights them she can hear their hunger for her life, and they can hear that she is not yet ready to release it.

The mob in front of her is brawling, but their target is not one of them; he feels different, somehow, perhaps a ghoul. She cuts the beasts off him. When they are down and he is free, the anomaly turns on her, howling for blood, but Sereda lowers her sword and raises her shield. She is here to kill darkspawn, not men, and if he is a ghoul she wants to know it first. Her mind has played some tricks of late.

He crashes into her, all rage and fangs and the half-sharp claws of salvaged weapons. She plants her feet and pushes him down. The ghoul— she is reasonably sure he is one, now— falls to the ground and she crouches over what was once a man. The faint light catches on the amulet at his neck, the Warden's Oath, their covenant of blood, and a strangled sound escapes her.

Not a ghoul, she realizes. A Warden. One of her own.

He has it even worse than her, she thinks, and it is a fate she can't imagine. He's too far gone to know she's real, and his skin and mind are ravaged by the sickness, but she still thinks she should know him. She runs over the roster of all the men she's Joined over the years and comes up empty. It takes her longer than it should have to realize that she didn't make him; he's the one who made _her_. Sereda lifts her chin.

"Imagine finding you here," she drawls, "amidst all this darkness."

The deserter tries to stand and she kicks him back, forcing her boot into his chest and bearing down until she has the bulk of him to the ground again. His pauldrons scrape cold stone. He struggles still, and though he has the advantage of height and weight, Sereda had the advantage of six long months and all the intervening years, and she keeps it. She leans into her knee.

"You left me," she says.

The sound of her voice unlocks a clarity inside him. His eyes focus for a moment as he finds her.

"You spared him," he returns.

Her thoughts are shifted by time and the taint, and it takes Sereda a moment to come up with the _him_ she's meant to have spared. The two of them still do not see eye to eye on this point. From her vantage it no longer seems like she showed any mercy to Loghain. The image of the General that sticks in her mind is not the vital man she dueled at Landsmeet, it is the soulless meat she left on top of Fort Drakon.

"No one is ever spared," she tells him.

Alistair is a ghost under her heel. For so long he's been a phantom in her mind, a haunting she could never quite exorcise, something real and not-real all at once. Not even in her happiest moments was she ever truly free of him, her spirit galled by the unspent way in which he stormed out of her life.

"You should have let me die," he says.

Sereda shakes her head. She's not sure if he means with Anora then, or the darkspawn here, but it wasn't in her to do either. He strains under her foot and she looms over him, studying the wreckage of his face. He's looked better, she thinks, and she wonders briefly if he thinks the same. He turns his darkened eyes on her. She spent a boon to save this man, but she fears the man she remembers was not saved.

"It's near enough," she says. "Shall I end it now?"

He doesn't answer, perhaps he can't even hear her any more. He didn't listen to her then. Duncan would have taken Loghain, she'd said; he'd taken worse. He'd taken her, and gladly, though she'd been led astray. Sereda needed every Warden she could get, she had needed Loghain, and she had needed _him_. Needed him in ways that shocked her with the strength of them when he was gone. Her memory is sliced to ribbons, thoughts untethered and shimmering between the drumbeats of her Calling, but she still remembers this: she loved him.

She _loved_ him. It hardly counts for anything anymore, as Sereda can't tell him half of what she wants to say. She has rehearsed the words a thousand times to herself, in quiet moments of rage, in angry moments of despair, but she can't bring them up. All her cohesion is lost. She is only the taint and the edge of her sword, and the sword is all she has left for him, now. It hangs heavy in her hand.

"I thought I might find you here," he says, stopping her.

Sereda shifts her weapon. When it's put like that, she recognizes the oddity in his coming _here_, of all places, when he let go of his lower-cased calling in every other sense. Why come here to die as a Warden, when he had not lived as one? She does not have enough words left to articulate this question.

"Why now?" she manages. "Why are you here?"

He runs a narrow tongue across cracked lips. "Why are you?"

A Warden is always a Warden, Riordan told them. It's thick as blood and murky as the truth, but more than anything it isn't a uniform that can be worn for a time and then simply discarded. If a Warden survives too long he always ends up here, inevitably searching for the death that has already found him. Every Warden. Even him.

"It was my time," she explains, though it does not need to be said: he knows.

There is nothing left to be said. Once she wanted to know where he went, and what he had done, and why he never came back, and more than anything she wanted to know how he felt about leaving, later, when his staggering loss became abstract. She wanted to know if it was worth it, if he ever regretted it, or if he ever thought of her, but none of these things seem to matter now, and so she only sighs, and then she eases her boot off his chest.

With a grunt she begins to walk away. For years she hated him more than Bhelen or Howe or any other traitor, but she's made a career of forgiving murderers and scoundrels and it's hard to hold onto that anger when they are both about to die alone. She pauses, chews her lip, then glances over her shoulder, sees him rise shakily to his feet.

"Are you coming?" she asks.

Alistair meets her eyes, and for a moment she sees a glimmer of the man that she remembers. Without another word he nods and falls in step behind her. The darkspawn tide rises to meet them, and they engage the swell together, lifting their weapons and calling their battle cries. The monsters stare in slack-jawed surprise and fall beneath the flurry of their combined assault. Beside her, Alistair is still a powerful force, and he slips into her rhythm, sidestepping as she charges, attacking as she parries.

She catches the last hurlock on her shield and lets him slide a sword between its ribs. When it crumples she stumbles forward, and he catches her by the wrist, keeping her on her feet. It is a dance that they know well. Sereda leans back and looks up into his eyes.

"Thank you," she breathes.

Alistair is beside her, in front of her, above her. She had forgotten how tall he is. She remembers him then, surging over her like something greater than herself. He is become again the same man he always should have been, the one who helps her find the way, who follows her lead, who shares her trust, the man she loved. His other hand goes to her waist, supporting her.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

And now there is a relative question: they are both a long way from right. She's unharmed but her head is throbbing, and she can feel him swaying to the same pulsing beat. They are being played like instruments by the song in their heads. _Find me_, it sings. _Free me. Become me._ The song is getting louder. Sereda runs her hands through her hair, tugging at her scalp to try and liberate her thoughts.

"Right enough," she says, and leaves it at that.

But it's getting harder to hold onto herself. She is Sereda the Lady formerly Aeducan, the exile, the surfacer Paragon. Sereda the hero of the tale, the Warden-Commander, the dwarven princess become an arlessa. Sereda his jilted lover. The bearer of the torch, the one who stayed behind, the one who kept her calling, who stayed her sword, who persevered. Sereda who is. All these things that she has been come together and finally fade away.

When Alistair looks at her again his eyes are clouded. "Sereda," he says. Somehow his voice has changed. "Where are we?"

Sereda frowns. "The Deep Roads," she answers, "but I don't..." The words trail off.

She can tell it's the Deep Roads because she remembers the feeling of the stone around her, but she can't quite piece together why they're there. She shakes her head and comes unstuck inside her memories. She notices she has found some boots, and she's glad; it is hard to fight Deep Stalkers in bare feet. Duncan will be here soon, she thinks, before it comes to her that Duncan is gone, and they must find the Anvil of the Void alone. She wonders what the days are like for Hespith, left alone to her madness, chanting in the dark.

An ogre roars, and the bone rattling cry shakes her out of her reverie, tearing at her veins. She finds the monster with her eyes and sees the horde surrounding it, a teeming mass of tainted brethren that she can feel beneath her skin, singing in her flesh. There are so many of them it feels like a symphony. She senses Alistair beside her, his blood humming the same tune, their heartbeats matching time.

With a sudden reverence she sees their death approaching and feels a crushing guilt. The Blight would win and these Roads would be their tomb. Alistair turns to her and she knows he sees it too.

He says: "I am sorry."

Sereda catches her breath. She doesn't know why he's apologizing; it was her mistake to lead them so deep inside these tunnels. Perhaps he knows that it is hard for her to make all these choices for him. Sereda takes his hand.

"We did best we could," she tries.

Alistair nods and seems to understand. There is very little time. Sereda never thought she would return to the stone with a human, but in this moment she can't imagine it any other way. She drops his hand and charges, and when he takes his place beside her it's as though he's always been there.


End file.
